Wow! This week with the eclipse and spending that time with my 14 year-old grandson Kevin was soooo special! We had eighty-five percent of the eclipse in a pure clear sky with the birds and the noisy cicadas in the woods behind us. His parents, who are serious astronomy hobbyists, headed down to Tennessee to get in a total eclipse area, but he did not want to spend that long in the car. The traffic for them was aweful and they had to spend an extra night in a motel on the way home, so he clearly made the right choice for him and it gave me and his uncle David a real special time together with Kevin even though it was not total here. I am told Ken got some photos to process of the eclipse. I am looking forward to seeing them.

This comes at an interesting time in my quilting life, because I am trying to line up a couple of new deep space quilts to fill out my space series inspired by the fabulous photos found in the NASA gallery. The pictures have to be copyright free for me. I have tried a couple of times to get in touch with the astronomers whose pictures NASA sometimes shows that are copyrighted and they simply ignore my inquiries. But there are many many magnificent copyright free photos available to use for the basis of new quilts. I will probably also include a couple of space quilts that may use other techniques inspired by Ken’s (oldest son, Kevin’s Dad) and Beth’s (his wife) photography and ideas. I am planning on writing about making space quilts and including all of these in the book. This will probably be a part of my ongoing project of Art Quilt Basics: Surface Design and Embellishment that I hope to get published this year. These quilts are practically all surface design and embellishment with organic, but well planned, quilting. They are very hard to photograph because of all the light reflection, but I leave that to Ken, who does a credible job on it.

So I am currently on the hunt for my next deep space quilt photo inspirations. If you have a favorite, let me know in a comment but do it soon, because I’m going to start working on this next space quilt very soon. 😄

I hope you are all having fun with your art, sewing, or quilting. I’m busy drawing up a couple of new ideas and making sampler quiltlets to include in my book project Art Quilt Basics: Machine Quilting for Art Quilters (this book starts with the very basics for machine quilting (both feed dogs up and free motion) and moves through the process ending with a discussion and ideas specific for art quilters.

Sew happy everyone! Make yourselves a stack of small quilt sandwiches and play. You’ll be surprised how much fun it is…use all your machines. You will benefit by improving your skills and having a lot of fun too. Cheers.

I am going to take the second batch of my quilts out to G Street Fabrics in Rockville, Maryland, for the second part of the exhibit of my quilts. This exhibit, which runs from mid July until the end of August or so, includes nearly all my show quilts except for Pendragon, Dad’s House plan, this year’s Hoffman Challenge still on tour, and a couple I have sold or given away. They will be displayed throughout the store, including those that are already there in the Bernina department. I also have completed one new quilt and nearly finished a second new quilt just for this exhibit. Some of these quilts are available for purchase. I will (really) post photos of the exhibit sometime in the latter half of July.

Sew here is where I’m at on the preparations. I have completed the second one of my Alfred Shaheen panel quilts and named it “Tropical Garden”. I used a lot of Superior’s new 100 weight polyester thread called Microquilter on both that quilt and the “Field of FLowers” I hope to finish by Friday to include in the exhibit.

A Review of Microquilter Thread

When I won all thirty colors of Superior’s Microquilter 100 weight polyester from Superior Threads, I was really thrilled. I use almost more 100 weight threads than I do any other thread. I use it for background quilting, detail thread sketching on things like flowers and line drawings, and I also love it for machine applique. I do not use it for piecing or bobbins.

I found it a wonderful workable thread. I tried it in my Bernina Q20 sit down longarm, my Bernina 830 LE, and my Bernina 350. In every case I had to lower the top tension to keep it from breaking, just as I do for silk 100 wt and monopoly. It worked beautifully without further adjustment in everything but the Q20. For that, I had to lower the bobbin tension also (I used it with Bottom Line in the bobbin, though I did try one bobbin with the Microquilter). I found surprisingly that the Superior top stitch needle size 80 worked better than a smaller needle that I use for monopoly and silk. So here is how I ended up setting up my Q20 (Fritz) if you have one:

I have found my Q20 works better with a Magic Bobbin Genie sized for M bobbin. I just put it in over the spring in the bobbin. Without it, I have some thread nests on the bottom of my quilt when I get going really fast, and believe me, the Q20 can go REALLY fast.

I set the bobbin tension with Superior’s Bottom Line or the Microquilter itself for 180 using the tension guage that came with my machine. If you use the Microquilter in your bobbin don’t wind it full. It works better a little less…starting at about 3/4 full. In the course of making two quilts, I used both Bottom Line that I wound and some prewound Superior thread bobbins that use Bottom Line.

I set the top tension for 125

I used a size 80 Superior top stitch titanium needle.

I used BSR1 set at 280 speed for tiny little stippling and 200 for slower tiny bubbles

This setup makes it work like a dream…no nests, no hangups, no tension problems

I will provide some pictures of my quilting with Microquilter as soon as I get them taken. I am behind in getting my quilts photographed.

I got my little personal app quilt home that was a part of Road to California’s traveling exhibit of app quilts. It has lost about six hot fix crystals out of hundreds, so I need to replace them by Friday. I have one quilt that needs washing and reblocking, which I will do today. I have several more stumpwork butterflies to make for the Field of Flowers and I have to put the rod pocket and label on it. I think I can make the Friday deadline on this one, since the actual quilt is complete and bound. I even have the silver spider charm on the spider web part of that quilt. Here’s the dragonfly that is ready to go onto the quilt already. It’s in parts and needs a little additional embroidery after attachment where the wings attach to the body. I will do turned edge applique of the body and hide the wing wires under that. I will also probably darken the little white edges of the sheer to match the stitching. I may even do a hand blanket stitch over the edges if I decide it needs it. The first picture shows the pieces after stitching, and the second picture shows the dragonfly together ready to applique on.

The embroidered pieces, which I made in the hoop with my Bernina 830 LE

And I also need to ship “Pendragon” to AQS this week. I want to do a little gold paint touch up on the border paint before I ship it.

So I have a really busy week ahead of me, but it’s an exciting time. I am enormously pleased that G Street has asked me to show my quilts in the exhibit there. It is a real honor. I hope you have a chance to see it. The whole show will be available in mid-July. I’m not sure of the exact dates, so you might want to call them before you head there.

Believe it or not, I have completed all my projects I had going. Now that the workshop at G Street Fabrics is over (I will be repeating it in the fall), I am going to make two quilts centered around two digital printouts. I’m hoping to get one of them done by mid July for part two of my Exhibit at G Street Fabrics.

The field of flowers is a photograph by Beth Tatum, my daughter-in-law:

Photo by Beth Tatum, printed on fabric 36″ x 26″

The pink flowers I painted in Corel Painter 17 and had it printed.

I painted this one digitally in Corel Painter 17 and had it printed 28″ x 38″.

They came out really wonderful, and I washed them in Synthrapol, rinsing until they ran clear. There wasn’t much color in the first batch of water and I can’t see any color loss. So now I can use them in a quilt I will soak when the quilting is complete, which makes marking things and blocking a lot easier. I’ll have some embellishments I will add after blocking.

I plan on just sandwiching and quilting the field of flowers photo with a variety of threads for depth and interest and adding beadwork and some 3D embroidered butterflies. I might face it instead of binding it.

I plan on adding a double border on the pink flowers. The inner border will maybe be shaped and appliqued on. I plan on shortening the flower panel at the top to bring the border down to the vine, and cutting out the top half of the leaves that would be hidden by the border to have them break into the border. Then I will quilt it with some pictographic flowers, vines, and creatures, also quilting in the flower and leaf textures. I also am working on designing two or three 3d stumpwork with wire of small birds in
Bernina V7 software to applique on. This is my bigger project, as you might imagine. If this turns out well, this might be a show quilt, but we’ll see.

In the meantime, I have broken down my housecleaning project into small manageable sections and am spreading them out across a couple of weeks. I did pretty well with this so far. My upper level is mostly clean, though I have a plan to go through my stash at some point, eliminating some things and slightly reorganizing the fabrics so they all fit back into my storage units. I’ll do this later, after the mid-July deadline for the second part of my G Street Fabrics exhibit. I’ll do the main level next week, and David will do his level too (he has a nice “flat” on the walkout lower level that includes his bedroom/office and a nice big living area with his own back deck. There is a bathroom area that has the rough in plumbing, but I haven’t gotten it finished yet. Maybe if he has a big hit book, he will do that himself.).

A word about digital fabric art: It is NOT “cheating” as some quilters seem to think. For example, it took me s lot of time to paint the pink flowers, and they are fully my own artwork. Why would that be any less of a “legitimate” quilt than a whole cloth, for instance? Neither would a photograph that is printed, sandwiched, and quilted as a whole cloth. I do think there is slightly greater acceptance of the value of digitally printed fabrics than there used to be. And that is good. Indeed, am hopeful some of the heated rhetoric about just about everything these days will cool off. Let’s appreciate one another and their work…traditional, contemporary, modern, and art quilters, white collar and blue collar workers, sharing their Mom’s house while writing wonderful stories for the world to enjoy, making art quilts, plumbing the kitchen, powerwashing your home, managing a business, Democrat, Republican, Independent…cool it everyone. Life can be wonderful and full of peace and love if we stop the arrogance and heated rhetoric and take a step back to love and appreciation that we are not all-knowing.

Sew happy everyone! Try your hand at making some digital fabric art if you haven’t tried it yet. I’ll post more on these projects along the way. Also, I have decided to put the landscape project I tried to start as a kind of block of the month on the backburner. It needs more definition, and everyone that responded said they were too busy. I think I am too busy too…LOL.

2008This is my very first show quilt and you can see the scotch tape on my photograph…LOL. So you can see my professional side of show quilting has grown as well as my quilt making abilities.

As I prepare for my upcoming exhibit of my work at G Street Fabrics in Rockville, Maryland, one of the things they wanted was for me to provide my Hoffman Challenge quilts, which, if you look at them carefully, you can see my progress as both an artist and a quilter from year to year. Unlike some of my quilty friends who make a quilt, enter it, and win big, I have struggled, indeed still struggle, to move my art quilting to a truly professional level, but it has been fun along the way. I love making art in fabrics, threads, and paints. I think my artist side has been a little slower in developing than my quilting techniques, but I’m working on it.

“Equipped to Stand” 2012Even though I can now see many flaws in both the design and the quilting making techniques on this quilt, I still love it. I would never send this quilt out for show today, but we all learn. They let it into several shows and the judges were sweet about it and their remarks didn’t bash me down to the point I quit quilting. Unlike this photo, it is square and relatively flat, though I had to undo a lot of it to get a wave out of it. You can see it was not all that long ago. I have come a looong ways from here. If they had torn it apart, I might have quit.

To me, an art quilt needs to have a lot of elements come together to make it good and this is what I am always striving for. Starting with the basic design concept I draw the concept while considering balance, value, color, placement, perspective, and simply artistic appeal. I am constantly attempting to learn more about all this through practice, books (some left from art classes in college and some collected over the years), and, more recently, online training. I’m still trying.

So here is my process for a complex show quilt (not for all of my quilts).

I try to capture the concept that is in my head or the inspirational photo by drawing the picture of the planned quilt on my computer, thereby providing me with a “pattern” . Here is how I work through this.

I use Corel Draw to draw out some elements, like buildings or space ships, and saving them with a transparent background as a .png file, which will import into other packages without a background.

I use Corel Painter, a truly powerful digital painting software, to draw the main picture, importing the items from Corel Draw and placing them where they belong. I size it here and save with iterative painter files and finally as a .jpg.

I may go back and forth between Corel Draw and Corel Painter several times because one program is better than another for various things.

If I am putting borders on the quilt I will then move to Electric Quilt and set it up with a single block sized properly for my .jpg. Then I play with the borders until I like them. This gives me the pattern for the borders. I save this as a .jpg.

I move back to Corel Draw and start a new file (you can’t just open a .jpg in Corel Draw, but you can import one). I import the design I saved in Electric Quilt into Corel Draw and size the image to the size I want the quilt to finish. Corel Draw has a wonderful way of tiling the picture into sizes that match the printer paper with symbols to mark where they join. I usually print the pattern on a 11″x 17″ paper. I print one pattern in color and one in gray scale. I also print the border pattern from EQ7.

I tape the pattern together carefully.

Then I pin the colored print on my design wall, or tape it somewhere if that is occupied, and sit there looking at it every now and then, wondering how on Earth I am going to accomplish this quilt. At this point, I take time off from this particular project if I have time. This is why I usually have some ongoing simple quilt or clothing projects so I can go work on something else while the concept “marinates” in my mind and I talk to myself…sometimes exclaiming “Oh THAT’s what I can try!” I’m glad my son’s flat is on the lower level, and is not in my studio to hear me, he might be looking for “a place for Mom”, although, he’s a sci-fi/fantasy writer so probably not.

I keep a notebook nearby to write down my ideas.

Once I’ve figured out more or less how I’m going to make the quilt, I just jump in. I first shop my stash to see if I have what I need for this quilt and buy the rest, including fabrics, threads, paints, and other embellishments. After all my years of sewing and quilting my stash is now such that often I am able to complete a quilt without buying anything, or buying only one item. It generally takes me nearly half the time of total time making a quilt to get to this point.

I have to take one or two elements of the quilt at a time.

I make samples and try things until I find what works.

I have to figure what must come first…usually working from background forward.

I take photos along the way because for some reason I can see mistakes better in a photograph than directly looking at the project. I think I get too close to it, as they say.

I unsew and go backwards when I need to, but try to limit this as much as possible. Sometimes “mistakes” are actually result in a good new direction.

As I construct the quilt, I pay close attention to how flat and square the project is becoming along the way. It’s ok not to have a square quilt, but it has to be deliberately not square and obviously not intended to be square. Construction techniques really still need to be right. This often involves my ripping things out for correction, and sometimes even just starting over. I have obtained a laser square and a laser cross-hair lamp to help me with this

I’m not a piecer, but sometimes I have to piece. “Pendragon” had the main center block, and ten border and text block pieces that all HAD to be square and straight and the border had to be lined up so the designs were straight and in the right place. This is one of the more challenging things for me, because, did I say it? I’m not a piecer. Piecing is much more challenging to me than it must be to traditional quilters, who seem to love it. I piece when I have to in order to realize my design. I sometimes use foundation paper piecing when I need a real quilt block, like I did for “Waiting…” and “Drawing Nigh”. So I’m very happy to have these tools and techniques to help me piece.

Sew once I have completed the top, including any highlighting or lowlighting I do with fabric paints and inks, I sandwich my quilt mostly using basting adhesive and rulers to get the lines that need to be straight and square right and adding some quilting pins because I use a very light amount of adhesive spray on the batting only. This is my least favorite thing of making a quilt and I find it physically taxing, especially if it has to be on the floor because of size, and I wear a mask and often have to do it over and over again until it is right.

Then I quilt it, bind it, add a pocket, a label, and block it. My oldest son Ken photographs it at his home in my daughter-in-law’s wonderfully big studio where her longarm and her Bernina 880 resides. Beth was, afterall, the one who pulled me into quilting after Marvin died because she was sure I would love it. I’m not sure she expected me to love it as much as I do, and I know she didn’t expect me to move into the art quilt world. Before this happened, I had made several pieces of fabric art, had sewn for most of my life, used to have my own fashion design and tailoring business, and made my own clothes and some of Marvin’s. I found art quilting simply unleashed and pulled together all the sewing and art skills I had learned in my life, but I did need to learn a lot before it was any good.

And I’m still learning, experimenting, and moving through art quilting. Maybe someday I’ll start winning the big ribbons (I have won a few ribbons, but no BOS).

Sew are any of you making our free design art quilt with me introduced in my last blog post? How’s it coming? I’m not rushing you. It will probably be another couple of weeks or month before I get to the next step. I’m preparing for my exhibit and I figure the first step is a big one.

I am making a fun new design-as-you-go stylized landscape quilt with some kind of flying creature and I hope you will try one of these too. For as many steps as it takes (to be determined) I will be providing a blog post to take us through this quilt together. This quilt is made without first drawing out and printing a full sized design and will be using techniques that I am sure you may wish to try or have tried already. I am not providing a pattern, telling you what size it will be, or even tutorials for all the techniques needed. This is a project for us to play together making some wall art. I will tell you where you can find the techniques, providing the links, and for some parts I will give tutorials, but not all. It can be as simple or as complex as you want to make it, with guidance as to where you can find help. And if you have a question all you have to do is make a comment on the blog post and I will respond as soon as I can.

Let’s begin:

I am using some interesting techniques available online at Iquilt and Craftsy. But you don’t have to take a class for this project, just follow along. If you have Electric quilt 7 and know how to do foundation paper piecing you, or you already know how to make a compass block, you can do this without additional classes.

For this fun project there are several objects we will need to make and obtain.

Challenge–Make The Sun: This can be either a simple quarter of a large circle of fabric to applique on a sky or one quarter of a sun compass block or a smaller full stylized star block in your choice of sun colors for your imaginary world. For my quilt I am using the star block that Karen K. Stone teaches in “English Paper Piecing by Machine” found on iquilt here. It’s very similar to a regular compass block, but has some interesting differences. If you watch the sales, you can almost certainly get this class on a very good sale. But there are a lot of beautiful choices for a star to represent our own star, the sun. Here are some I found on Electric Quilt 7 that would be great choices with some color changes. The outside large piece, or the background pieces need to be made from the same fabric as your background sky piece (see below), or you can use the curve to applipiece or piecelique (whatever you call it…it’s just joining the two pieces in an applique manner) it directly into the background sky. I will provide a little tutorial of this in my next blog related to this project. So just hold off on attaching the star/sun to the background sky.

These blocks were all found in Electric Quilt 7 and would work very nicely. You can change the colors, of course, however you want them.

In addition you could draft your own compass rose. I found this fascinating method on The Quilt Show that uses a really neat drafting device available from Renea Haddadin’s website here. I don’t have this device, but it really looks useful far beyond the drafting of a compass rose.

Put together the background: For this you will need a full width of ombre gradiated fabric that will be one third of the length of your finished quilt, or just a plain piece of fabric that looks like a sky to you. You can paint this, buy this, or construct this with strips of various pieces of fabric. You just have to size the sun appropriately to fit in the upper left corner of the scene. Two thirds of your quilt will be mountains and maybe water or grass somewhere in there. If you want to make this easy, you can use a simple white or off white or even light brown or green for the lower two thirds of your quilt background, giving you a background to applique mountains and rivers and plants onto. Remember, this is a design as you go quilt and is meant to be just for fun.

Wait to applique the sun in the upper left corner of your background until my next blog when I will be discussing applique techniques.

Okay, that’s all for now. Go forth and make a sun and gather the background pieces or even make the simple background. The next part will deal with appli-piecing the sun into the sky, and making the mountains and other parts of the foreground. Then there is a part for making plants, and finally we will make some kind of flying creature for our scene, which may take several parts. I plan on following this with a series of blogs focusing on embellishing and quilting. I am not calling this a “block of the month” or anything, but I am planning this to stretch across several months…not sure how many.

Sew happy everyone! Do some thinking about this…join me in the adventure and make your own wall quilt just for fun and to stretch your design techniques a bit.

I just came home all inspired by a delightful few days at Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival where I had “Pendragon”. I put together some of my pictures from the show. Here is a link to the picture file: Smugmug/MAQF 17

I stayed a day longer than I usually do for this show and it gave me lots of time to see every quilt, take all four lectures I was interested in and see the Show and Tell that I usually miss. I also did a lot of shopping. Well, afterall, my 70th birthday will be this coming Friday on March 3rd, so I gave myself some presents…threads, new rulers (a set of circles and a set of ovals), and one of those spinning cutting mats among a few additional small items.

The loot from the show

Pendragon did not place, but I believe it to be mostly because the theme of the show was modern quilting and that quilt has nothing to say that is even remotely modern quiltish. I still believe it is a ribbon worthy quilt, so we will see what it does in the future. I decided to see if they would include it anyway because I sort of consider MAQF my main show. It is within driving distance and I have relatives in the area, so going there is always a treat for me. I did get some nice comments from the judges:

Your original design effective in telling your story; Embroidery well executed; Piecing well done; Quilting motifs compliments the design; Quilt hangs flat and square; Back of quilt should be free of loose threads and lint” (note: I sticky rolled it and examined it with my big magnifying lamp when I packed it…lint may have happened on their end. That backing fabric I used was a little lint grabbing…not using that again).

Pendragon34 x 45

A New Page Is Turned

Now, however, I am turning a page on my work. From here I am focusing on the quilt work itself, and on figuring out how to pass on what I have learned even as I maintain my studio artist status (not a lot of travel, a little teaching within driving distance, writing books and creating tutorials), rather than so much focus on the competition work. I will still enter shows, and still plan on making show quilts (they teach me a lot and give me a chance to stretch my work), but it’s an attitude and work flow adjustment in my studio that is on this nice new page in my life. You can see more about this in one of my past blogposts here.

On Antiques

There are lots of definitions of “antique”. The one I like the best for this discussion is “an object such as … a work of art that has a high value because of its considerable age.” Tomorrow (Friday, March 3rd), I will be 70 years old. I am a work (in progress) maybe even a “work of art” and have considerable age. I think every human being has high value…so there you are. I could probably be called “an antique” fabric artist. I feel physically great (have also lost some weight recently and hope to lose more) and I believe I am as mentally alert as ever (always a little daphy). Many of my ancestors lived well into their hundreds. I have a wonderful plan for my future and my kids are nearby. My studio is well stocked, and my fleet of machines is wonderful and in good working order. I’m excited about the future. Thank the good Lord and I hope you will continue to join me on my quilting journey.

On Tutorials

One of the things I am going to begin on this blog post is a regular short tutorial (every week or month?). This week’s tutorial is answering a question I got a lot at the show…how I made the chain mail on my characters in Pendragon using Bernina v7. I haven’t yet gotten v8, but I suspect this would work there also.

Digitizing Chain Mail for Small Applique (Or using special fills to create what you want)

I wanted to make the characters’ chain mail shirts look right, and decided the best approach was to digitize the chain mail in my Bernina v7 software and embroider it in the hoop. This took me a while to discover how to do it. I think I spent two or three days on figuring this out, but I just did a chain mail heart shape and took snap pictures for this tutorial all in about three minutes. So I thought I’d share this with you in case you wanted to create something special with interesting fills and shapes. Using Bernina v7 software:

Draw a closed shape…you can put the picture in the art canvas side and trace it on the embroidery side

Right click on the object and bring up the Object Properties dialogue box.

Draw shape and in object properties box make these selections (sorry the text box got cut off, but that’s what is said more or less).

These are the selections I made..sizes will depend on your own project size and requires a little experimentation to get it right.

I had to turn my shirts upside down and move them around to get the wave fill to match where the parts of the wave needed to be to show the expansion and contraction of the chain…like a shirt on a beautifully muscled knight. 😀 I also gave each shirt their own color to help me figure out which belonged where when complete. I embroidered them all in Superior Fantastico 5169..a silvery variegated gray on black fabric. I cut them out close to the embroidery and glued them on with Roxanne basting glue and blanket stitched the edges in the same thread to give them a finish.

So there you are. I can see this method working for a wide variety of appliques and purposes. The software is so flexible, but finding out how to do something you want to do that is a little different can take time.

Finished chain mail in place

On Upcoming Events:

For the month of May and a couple of weeks into June, G Street Fabrics in Rockville, Maryland, is hosting an exhibit of my quilts. I will have one day where I will provide a walking lecture tour of my approximately 15 quilts that will be placed around the store. I’ll let you know when that is.

In June, I will be providing a workshop on machine quilting at G Street.

My quilt “Drawing Nigh” will be at AQS in Lancaster, PA, March 20-April 1. If you attend and see my quilt, let me know.

Sew happy everyone. Focus on your creative projects to have the most fun, put in your best effort, learn a little bit, and share, and don’t let it stress you out. I would really appreciate comments.

I promised you I would write some posts about the making of Pendragon after it was accepted into its debut quilt show. Pendragon will be shown in the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival on Feb 23-26. I am so excited because I am planning on attending this show. When you read this post, I will probably be there, since I am setting this up for posting on the day I leave for the show. Because of this, I can finally reveal the finished quilt picture.

I actually made a few small changes since this picture was taken. There was some stitching that went on a downhill decline under the lower left of the pictorial center on the top of the black text box. I spent a whole day frogging (ripping out the stitching) of about five inches of decorative stitching and restitching it. It was worth it. I think it was the only thing that would stand in the way of a judge who likes the design deciding it is a good quilt. I’m not sure you can see it here on this web-sized picture, but I also added some interesting quilting below the text in the block. I had to enlarge the text box just a bit to make the borders I made fit just right.

So here is a web-sized picture of the design that Ken gave me for my birthday last year, along with the threads and fabrics. I blogged about this gift here. He gave me the throne room background in a separate full-sized file without banners or people or the table, which I had printed on cotton by Spoonflower.

You can see there are some differences. The banners are all a little different, the text box is longer than the one shown here to make everything fit together, and the border designs, which were a huge challenge, all have slight differences. Also, there were three more swords pointing on the table from off-picture knights that I eliminated.

So first of all, I sent out the thrown room to be printed, as I said, and then I tried to dye the prepared for dye cotton/silk radiance he gave me to get that nice rich dark green for the Celtic borders. It came out a very pretty color, but not dark enough. Here’s a picture of the fabric. It will make a wonderful green for another quilt, so it isn’t a lost effort (I’m thinking a whole cloth pictograph).

My green dyed Radiance

So I talked to some of my quilting friends, particularly Jerry Granata, who has one specialty of working in unusual fabrics, and bought some (much less expensive) poly satin of exactly the right color of dark emerald green and did some testing. That is what I ended up using. I also had some green cotton of the right color that I used to work out the design and way to achieve the Celtic border designs on. Quilters, I will tell you that getting these borders worked out was one of the biggest challenges of my entire fabric arts career. I wrote a little about it in previous blogs: One and two and three.

After that, I decided it would be best for me to withhold additional photos and construction information until it actually debuts at its first show, which will be the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival in just a week. I’m so excited. I decided to go to the show, not only because Pendragon got in, but so many of my quilting friends and mentors will be there. I’m not taking any classes, but I am going to attend several lectures, try to spend some time with my friends, do some quilt gazing and shopping, and stand by my quilt a bit even if it doesn’t place. And it may not place. I love it, but it does incorporate digitally printed fabrics, which is not an altogether accepted method yet, and I am all too aware that my quilting is not traditional in any way and needs to grow. I plan on showing it as much as I can over the next couple of years regardless of the reception by the judges just because it is a meaningful quilt that I want people to see. When it finally comes home for its retirement, I plan on giving it to Ken if he wants it. I am thinking it will also be at my exhibit of my quilts at G Street Fabrics in April or May (I’ll give you the dates when I get them).

Anyway, back to the making of the quilt. I loved the way the people came out mostly. I particularly like the queen. Her dress is a small print with gold that I outlined all the little flowers with gold thread quilting. I used a matching sheer for the sleeves and actually made tiny sleeves for her arms. All their hair is free motion thread work. The guys’ tabards and the little banners all have machine embroidered designs. The little banners are independent banners that I made, then hand stitched on top of the quilt.

I digitized the mens’ chain mail shirts using some of the powerful software in Bernina V7. It was a fun challenge and took me several days to make it come out with the appropriate differences that fit their bodies. Then it was embroidered on black and after applique I added some free motion chain work around them to make them look more real and smooth some of the joinings. The swords were so challenging to figure out that (after much consideration and discussion with Ken and Beth) I ended up printing the digital design of the swords from Ken’s design and appliqueing them on with monopoly. Getting the hands properly tucked around the handles was a bit of a challenge, but in the end, I was happy with the swords. I added black crystals on King Arthur’s sword. The crowns are free motion stitching using metallic threads with the addition of hot fix crystals.

All the quilting of the throne room was done with the idea of bringing out a 3D concept. I am generally happy with that result.

Then I faced the challenge of piecing it together. The border was in pieces and had to match up square and with the pictorial center. I should have had the throne room printed slightly larger, because by the time it was quilted and squared up, it was a bit smaller than the intended design. I dealt with this by adding a bit of black below the text box (to make up for the lengthwise shrinking), where I placed some quilting designs, and slightly narrowing the top and bottom small Celtic border pieces (to make up for the crosswise shrinking). But in the end, after a few bits of frogging and restitching, it actually came out very square and flat. I was ecstatic. Getting quilts square and flat, especially my art quilts that have so many different types of techniques, stitching, painting, etc, is a huge challenge every time. This one worked. I used my laser devices (a laser square and a laser cross hair lamp) to help get it square. If the judges measure it, and it doesn’t get shifted in any way in the transport and hanging, they will find it a square quilt.

I used Quilters Dream thin poly batting and Hobbs wool batting. I ended up using 6 titanium top stitch needles on this quilt…I think the gold paint dulled the points quicker. Constructed on my Bernina 830LE and quilted on my Bernina Q20. All Superior threads (variety of weights and colors).

Sew happy everyone! Will I see you at MAQF? Do you have any questions?

Design for my second Alfred Shaheen panel quilt (image using EQ7). There will also be painted designs of flowers and possibly birds around the border. I am currently working on those designs.

I am making as many quilts as I can to add to my upcoming exhibit of my quilts at G Street Fabrics in Rockville, Maryland, to take place sometime in the April/May period. I figure keeping busy is a great way to ignore the news as much as possible, and quilting is such a delightful way to do that.

I had such a lot of fun making my Hawaiian Garden quilt that was focused around the Alfred Shaheen panel that I made for the MQX Exhibit in 2016 and later gifted to my brother and his wife for their special 50th wedding anniversary that I decided to make another one (see design above). Here in this picture of Hawaiian Garden and you can see I will be using a similar border plan for the second AF panel quilt:

Hawaiian Garden…central panel is a vintage Alfred Shaheen panel.

I received permission to make the second quilt from Alfred Shaheen‘s daughter, since the first quilt had been made under MQX’s permission they got for the exhibit. His daughter asked that I let my quilt friends know that the panels are very rare and are obviously precious to her. I know that all of us who have made these for MQX are honoring his wonderful art work with our quilts.

I have also been working on the design for a panel quilt where I will be using a printout of the design I painted myself for the central panel. I worked out this plan below in EQ7 using the design I painted in the center. I still have to get the central panel printed. I may add some additional real painting in the border…I have an idea for that, but can’t get it drawn like I “see” it in my head yet. I might just leave it as is.

Both of these quilts will probably not take very long to make, now that I have worked out the designs and have the borders worked out in EQ7 which is very helpful in getting them cut properly. I already have the quilt top cut out and ready to piece together for the Alfred Shaheen panel quilt design shown at the top of this post. I plan on offering both of these new quilts for sale if they come out like I hope.

Sew happy everyone! Make a panel quilt…there are some wonderful panels out there now and they are really fun to make. You sometimes have to block them square first and steam helps too.

I don’t know about you, but I’m very excited about the promise and opportunities this new year brings. Right away in 2017 I have a batch of really exciting new projects all ready to start and several very interesting projects close to the finish. My sons, daughter in law, and grandson all have made me proud and their future for this year looks really promising. I even have begun to make some progress already on my plan to lose a lot of weight, which always seems harder for me than most. I am grateful and thankful to my dear Lord for all He has done for me.

I am first of all finishing Ken’s quilt, and then making several fun quilts that will be simply for my spring exhibit at G Street Fabrics in Rockville, Maryland and then for sale…not necessarily for shows. One book is well along the way and two are outlined and started. The next thing is to make a bunch of samples for these books. And I will have to make some new clothes if I actually succeed in my weight loss program, but that will probably be in the second half of the year.

This is a preliminary design of one of my quilts for the exhibit based on the digital flowers in the middle that I have spent several weeks painting in my spare time and finished today. I plan to have the central section printed on fabric. The borders will have a little more to them.

Sew happy everyone. May you have a wonderfully blessed and productive 2017. Celebrate!

I have made some adjustments in my thinking about my fabric art direction over the last few months that will lead to my putting less focus on competition art quilting and more on the adventure of making art as fabulous as I can. You may not see much difference, because I probably will continue to enter some of my work into shows, but the emphasis in my studio and in my mind is more on the art work and less on the show work.

I am very excited about this because I have so many things I want to try to make and I want to share with you, gentle readers, what I learn along the way.

This new direction came about because two quilts of mine that I know are quite show worthy and people would emjoy seeing them, were both rejected from Road to California 2017. That puzzled me (I have several theories about this, but I won’t share them here). They are wonderful quilts and deserved to be in the show. Here they are:

Yes, I know all the things that are said about this by friends trying to comfort me (I am not upset, by the way. It is a good thing that helped me think I needed to move in new directions)…”make what you love”, “even if they are rejected it doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with your quilt”, “they probably had too many in that category”, and so on. I appreciate it. But think about this: It costs money to enter a show, and my desire when I enter is chiefly to share my quilts with people.

If I win something it is icing on the cake, so not to get into a show is really harder for me to take than not placing. I used to clearly understand it if my quilt was rejected, since I was such a junior quilt maker and I could see the problems in the quilts myself. But my recent quilts are flat, square, quilted well, full of impact, individual, good designs, and worthy of sharing.

So I have decided to loosen my focus on shows a bit and look for new ways to share my quilts, sell my quilts, and share what I have learned (books, classes within driving distance, this blog, and so forth). I am having an exhibit of my quilts next spring at G Street Fabrics in Rockville. I still will try to get some quilts in if I think they fit well in a particular show, because that is the best way to share them with more people. But that will not be my focus for making a new quilt. I have so many quilts I want to make…fabric and thread experiments I want to try…digital to fabric experiments…and embellishment and applique adventures I want to go on. Without having to worry about the judges, I will have more freedom (though they will all still be made to show quality). It is so exciting.

I am currently working on my wonderful oldest son Ken’s design he gave me for my birthday in March. This quilt has taken me longer in actual hours than any other quilt so far. I have at last completed the central pictorial theme this week, made all the special border pieces and the text box. I only have to cover a tiny cord for inclusion in the quilt and I will be putting together all the pieces of the top very soon. I already have figured out how I am going to quilt it once I get it to that stage, and with my wonderful new Bernina Q20 (Fritz), I expect that to go well and faster than past quilts. I am hoping to get that into Houston next fall, since it’s always been intended as a show quilt, and if I do, I will hope to attend the show myself.

In addition to the creation of fabric art, I am planning on blogging several series of how-tos like my recent five-parter here, including one with a few months of a step-of-the-month project. I will be teaching some classes at G Street Fabrics in Rockville next year, and will be looking for other nearby possibilities for workshops (I don’t like to fly). I will finally finish writing the three books I already have been working on (Applique for fabric artists, Embellishment and surface design, and Quilting for art quilts) to be published by Fennec Fox Press (my youngest son’s small publishing company).